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Will Cloud Computing Make Everything (and Everyone) Work Harder?

Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesAt the headquarters of LiveOPS, a cloud-based call center service.

What do the following have in common: Computers, limousines, empty beds and stay-at-home moms?

The cloud keeps them busy.

The rest of us are next.

Virtualization of computer servers, a core element in the development of cloud computing, made it possible for a single PC that was used 20 percent of the time to be used 80 percent or more. Software monitored workloads, spotted when a machine was free, and assigned it a workload that would keep it busy without distracting it from the original function.

Now, thanks to the cloud’s ability to cheaply connect a lot of people and information over a broad array of devices, a similar use of spare resources is going on elsewhere in the economy. A company called Uber connects limousines that are between jobs with people who want a ride on the spur of the moment – after a boozy dinner, say, or a late night at work. The service Airbnbturns people’s spare rooms into a cheap alternative to hotels, sometimes with with mixed results.

It is possible to see this trend as a function of the cloud itself, since announcing, finding and occupying vacancies on the fly requires access from a lot of locations to common databases. It was always theoretically possible to rent out your room or pick up a fare in between jobs, but now it can be done cheaply and through a common system.

Another example of this trend is LiveOps, a cloud-based call center service. Companies like Pizza Hut, NationsHealth, and Kodak typically pay LiveOps’s agents 25 cents a minute to do things like take orders, field customer problems, and sell products. LiveOps farms the work out to 20,000 people who connect via the cloud from their homes. They sign on weekly for however many half-hour sessions they want, filling out what would otherwise be vacant time.

“The computers in the cloud find the right person among our agents, then routes the call to their house,” says Marty Beard, LiveOp’s chief executive. “They’re mostly students, parents, veterans looking for work – people with a little extra time.” In addition to phone calls, he is gearing the company up to respond to people’s Twitter and Facebook postings about the companies that have contracted with LiveOps.

Typically people work 25 hours to 30 hours a week, Mr. Beard says, gaining income by selling products, or getting licensed to sell insurance products. “If you’re really good, you can make $45,000 or $50,000 a year,” he says. “More likely, it’s half that.”

In effect, they are filling out their free time, like a limo on Uber or a server in a system, thanks to a cloud system.

This kind of machine-made urgency to utilize everything, creating lower prices (and for many, lower wages) will very likely find a lot more areas to attack. Much of our work may come to resemble a Uber or LiveOps model, as shared calendars and documents, along with location-aware devices, make work possible from more times and locations.

Correction: November 16, 2011An earlier version of this post misstated to whom companies make payment. It is to the LiveOps agents, not LiveOps.